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maxikov comments on Open thread, Dec. 1 - Dec. 7, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Good futurology is different from storytelling in that it tries to make as few assumptions as possible. How many assumptions do we need to allow cryonics to work? Well, a lot.
The true point of no return has to be indeed much later than we believe it to be now. (Besides does it even exist at all? Maybe a super-advanced civilization can collect enough information to backtrack every single process in the universe down to the point of one's death. Or maybe not)
Our vitrification technology is not a secure erase procedure. Pharaohs also thought that their mummification technology is not a secure erase procedure. Even though we have orders of magnitude more evidence to believe we're not mistaken this time, ultimately, it's the experiment that judges.
Timeless identity is correct, and it's you rather than your copy that wakes up.
We will figure brain scanning.
We will figure brain simulation.
Alternatively, we will figure nanites, and a way to make them work through the ice.
We will figure all that sooner than the expected time of the brain being destroyed by: slow crystal formation; power outages; earthquakes; terrorist attacks; meteor strikes; going bankrupt; economy collapse; nuclear war; unfriendly AI, etc. That's similar to the longevity escape velocity, although slower: to survive, you don't just have to advance technologies, you have to advance them fast enough.
All that combined, the probability of working out is really darn low. Yes, it is much better than zero, but still low. If I were to play Russian roulette, I would be happy to learn that instead of six bullets I'm playing with five. However, this relief would not stop me from being extremely motivated to remove even more bullets from the cylinder.
The reason why the belief in afterlife is not just neutral but harmful for modern people is that it demotivates them from doing immortality research. Dying is sure scary, we won't truly die, so problem solved, let's do something else. And I'm worried about cryonics becoming this kind of a comforting story for transhumanists. Yes, actually removing one bullet from the cylinder is much much better than hoping that Superman will appear in the last moment, and stop the bullet. But stopping after removing just one bullet isn't a good idea either. Some amount of resources are devoted to the conventional longevity research, but as far as I understand, we're not hoping to achieve the longevity escape velocity for currently living people, especially adults. Cryonics appear to be our only chance to avoid death, and I would be extremely motivated to try to make our only chance as high as we can possibly make it. And I don't think we're trying hard.
While mainstream belief in an afterlife is probably a contributing factor in why we aren't doing enough longevity/immortality research, I doubt it's a primary cause.
Firstly, because very few people alieve in an afterlife, i.e. actually anticipate waking up in an afterlife when they die. (Nor, for that matter, do most people who believe in a Heaven/Hell sort of afterlife, actually behave in a way consistent with their belief that they may be eternally rewarded or punished for their behavior.)
Secondly, because the people who are in a position to do such research are less likely than the general population to believe in an afterlife.
And finally, because even without belief in an afterlife, people would still probably have a strong sense of learned helplessness around fighting death, so instead of a "Dying is sure scary, we won't truly die, so problem solved, let's do something else." attitude, we'd have a "Dying is sure scary, but we can't really do anything about it, let's do something else." attitude (I have a hunch the former is really the latter dressed up a bit.).
On this particular point, I would say that people who are in a position to allocate funds for research programs are probably about as likely as the general population to believe in the belief in afterlife.
Generally, I agree - it's definitely not the only problem. The USSR, where people were at least supposed to not believe in afterlife, didn't have longevity research as its top priority. But it's definitely one of the cognitive stop signs, that prevents people from thinking about death hard enough.
About half of your list is actually an OR statement (timeless identity AND brain scanning AND simulation) OR (nanites through ice), and that doesn't even exhaustively cover the possibilities since at least it needs a term for unknown unknowns we haven't hypothesized yet. It's probably easiest to cover all of them with something like "it's actually possible to turn what we're storing when we vitrify a cryonics patient back into that person, in some form or another".
And the vast majority of cryonicists, or at least, those in Less Wrong circles who your post are likely to reach, already accept that the probability of cryonics working is low, but exactly how low they think the probability is after considering the four assumptions your list reduces to is something they've definitely already considered and probably would disagree with you on, if you actually gave a number for what "very low" means to see whether we even disagree (note: if it's above around 1%, consider how many assumptions there are in trying to achieve "longevity escape velocity", and maybe spread your bets).
And, as others have already pointed out, belief in cryonics doesn't really funge against longevity research. If anything, I expect the two are very strongly correlated together. At least as far as belief in them being desirable or possible goes, it's quite apparent that they're both ideas that are shared by a few communities such as our own and rejected by other communities including "society at large". How much we spend on each is probably affected by e.g. cryonics being a thing you can buy for yourself right now but longevity being a public project suffering from commons problems, so the correlation might be less strong and even inverse if you check it (I would be very surprised if it actually turned out to be inverse), but if so that wouldn't necessarily be because of the reasons you suggest.
I would say it's probably no higher than 0.1%.
But by no means I'm arguing against cryonics. I'm arguing for spending more resources on improving it. All sorts of biologists are working on longevity, but very few seem to work on improving vitrification. And I have a strong suspicion that it's not because nothing can be done about it - most of the time I talked to biologists about it, we were able to pinpoint non-trivial research questions in this field.
I think LW looks favorably on the work of the Brain Preservation Foundation and multiple people even donated.
How about putting numbers on it? Without doing so, your argument is quite vague.
Have you actually looked at the relevant LW census numbers for what "we are hoping"?
I would estimate the cumulative probability as the ballpark of 0.1%
I was actually referring to the apparent consensus what I see among researchers, but it's indeed vague. I should look up the numbers if they exist.
Most researchers don't do cryonics. I think a good majority of LW anti-aging research is underfunded. I don't buy the thesis that people who do cryonics are investing less effort into other ways of fighting aging.
The 2013 LW census asked a questions : "P(Anti-Agathics) What is the probability that at least one person living at this moment will reach an age of one thousand years, conditional on no global catastrophe destroying civilization in that time?"
"P(Cryonics) What is the probability that an average person cryonically frozen today will be successfully restored to life at some future time, conditional on no global catastrophe destroying civilization before then?"
And "Are you signed up for cryonics?"
The general takeaway is that even among people signed up with cryonics the majority doesn't think that it"s chance of working are bigger than 50%. But they do believe that it's bigger than 0.1%.
Who is "we", and what do "we" believe about the point of no return? Surely you're not talking about ordinary doctors pronouncing medical death, because that's just irrelevant (pronouncements of medical death are assertions about what current medicine can repair, not about information-theoretic death). But I don't know what other consensus you could be referring to.
Surely I do. The hypothesis that after a certain period of hypoxia under the normal body temperature the brain sustains enough damage so that it cannot be recovered even if you manage to get the heart and other internal organs working is rather arbitrary, but it's backed up by a lot of data. The hypothesis that with the machinery for direct manipulation of molecules, which doesn't contradict our current understanding of physics, we could fix a lot beyond the self-recovery capabilities of the brain is perfectly sensible, but it's just a hypothesis without the data to back it up.
This, of course, can remind you the skepticism towards flying machines heavier than air in 19th century. And I do believe that some skepticism was a totally valid position to take, given the evidence that they had. There are various degrees of establishing the truth, and "it doesn't seem to follow from our fundamental physics that it's theoretically impossible" is not the highest of them.
You missed a few:
I think trying to stop death is a rather pointless endeavour from the start but I agree the fact that most everyone has accepted it and we have some noble myths to paper it over certainly keep resources from being devoted to living forever. But then, why should we live forever?